13k PG medical seats vacant after 2 rounds of counselling

NEW DELHI: Nearly 13,000 postgraduate seats are vacant in medical colleges across the country after two rounds of counselling, health ministry sources said on Friday while justifying the need to reduce qualifying percentile to zero.

Ministry sources said India has a total 68,142 PG medical seats. These seats are filled on the basis of ranking in the NEET-PG examination. This year 2.2 lakh medical graduates appeared for the exam.

"Initially, the qualifying percentile was fixed at 50, meaning 50% of the applicants could appear for counselling to claim the seats as per their rankings. But many seats remained vacant after two rounds of counselling, which is why it was decided to reduce the qualifying percentile," said a source. The source said even last year the qualifying percentile was reduced to 20 to fill up vacant seats.

Sources said 3,000 seats in all-India quota and several seats from state quota remained vacant after counselling. "Allowing all medical graduates who appeared for NEET-PG exams to participate in the counselling process is aimed at increasing the pool of applicants, but seats will be allotted only on the basis of merit," the source said.

Till now, the health ministry claimed few students opted for non-clinical specialities like anatomy, microbiology, physiology and pathology due to which seats earmarked for them. This leads to a dearth of teachers for these courses.

"Now, the chances of filling up such seats will increase and so will the chances of getting teachers to teach these courses to medical students," said an official.